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Writing Japanese: The Chinese Characters

In addition to the two syllabaries, Hiragana and Katakana, Japanese also uses Chinese characters. In this context, they are known as "Kanji". However, the way Japanese uses Chinese characters is bit different from how they are used within Mandarin Chinese. Please do not get them confused!

In Japanese, many Chinese characters have more than one pronunciation and the way that we read them is dependent upon what other characters are next to it. Therefore, we are going to completely ignore their pronunciation for a moment and focus entirely on how they are written. This will make it easier to recognize and remember them when we pick up their pronunciation within the context of words.

This list of 1,629 Kanji is based off of the website Kanji Damage [Content Warning]. The characters within this list build upon themselves and/or are grouped by their visual similarity to one another.

Like the syllabaries, how the Chinese characters are written matters. This is called "stroke order". It makes one's handwriting more consistent and clear when it is followed, and helps computers to recognize handwriting input. The diagrams that demonstrate stroke order are from KanjiVG. The numbers show the order in which each stroke is written, and the location of the number shows where each stroke begins. The colors help differentiate one stroke from another. It is a lot of images, so it may take a moment to fully load. If an image returns a broken link, please right-click it and select "Reload Image".

Try to write each character in this list one after another. As you do so, always follow the stroke order! Keep in mind how the structure of each character relates to all of the ones that came before it within the list. Notice how some collections of strokes seem to repeat across characters. By the time that you have done a few hundred characters, the patterns that the strokes make will probably start to become a habit. One will begin to develop a "character sense". This will make it easier to distinguish between characters that seem very similar from one another, and eventually, one will have some idea of how to write characters immediately upon seeing them without having to look up their stroke order first.



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